Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic
eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated
in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government--which, however, already has denied all
knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.

As you can tell from the description above and from the subtitle of
the book, Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu novels aren't exactly politically correct.
But as I write this in May 1999, we have a president who's a weird cross
between Willie Stark and The Manchurian Candidate, the Cox Report has just
been released, detailing the wholesale penetration of our nuclear program
by Red China, the 10th anniversary of Tianamen Square is a couple weeks
away and the Pakistan/Indian border is a free fire zone, what better time
to read about the Yellow Peril.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the series (and the excellent
comic book series of yore, Master of Kung Fu) the stories detail the battle
of Nayland Smith, a mysteriously powerful British intelligence operative,
and his sidekick, Dr. Petrie, against the malevolent Dr. Fu Manchu. Fu
Manchu's plans are seldom explained, but we're damn certain they are bad
news for the West.

If you don't mind the admittedly dated aspersions that are cast on our
Asian brethren, the books make for an entertaining diversion. This
first one has two weaknesses, it's overly episodic and repetitive, because
Rohmer cobbled it together from several separate short stories. But
if you think of it in terms of an old time movie serial, you'll quickly
get over these quibbles and enjoy yourself immensely.